


right hand on his rifle, swore it on the bible

by quensty, somewhereoverthebifrost



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Episode: s04e16 On the Head of a Pin, Episode: s05e14 My Bloody Valentine, Gay Castiel (Supernatural), Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28565055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty, https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereoverthebifrost/pseuds/somewhereoverthebifrost
Summary: When Dean is twenty-six years old, he stands in the middle of a grimy, rundown shack for a safe house. His brother is knocked out cold in the corner, and Dean is pointing a gun at his dad’s face.He clicks off the safety, tucks his finger against the trigger, and—freezes.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 22
Kudos: 195





	right hand on his rifle, swore it on the bible

**Author's Note:**

> IN MY DEFENSE, deancas 2020 changed all of us. also the idea of an angel being shattered at the altar of the righteous man slaps. as if that's my fault. 
> 
> anyway, a few things: 
> 
> 1.) i started writing this a few weeks ago after v and i had an hour-long conversation that started because i screamed "eldest daughter dean winchester!!!!!" obviously, the idea diverted from what we originally planned and discussed, but the themes are mostly all the same. tbh her galaxy brain did most of the work; i just wrote shit down. 
> 
> 2.) i've tagged all of this, but here is ur extra warning that there is **implied sexual abuse** in this fic. none of it is explicit, but i explore dean's relationship to sex/physical affection/his body like. a lot. if u'd prefer to ask me about this before reading, please do. 
> 
> 3.) the title is taken from daddy lessons by beyonce: _with his gun, with his head held high / he told me not to cry / oh, my daddy said shoot / with his right hand on his rifle / he swore it on the bible_. beyonce is too good to ever write a song about spn, but it's 100% a dean winchester song i will not be accepting criticism at this time. 
> 
> 4.) u can reblog the fic [here](https://quensty.tumblr.com/post/639504224658571264/fic-right-hand-on-his-rifle-swore-it-on-the)! 

When Dean is twenty-six years old, he stands in the middle of a grimy, rundown shack for a safe house. His brother is knocked out cold in the corner, and Dean is pointing a gun at his dad’s face.

He clicks off the safety, tucks his finger against the trigger, and—freezes.

There are three rules to hunting, and breaking one of them is as good as breaking a Commandment. Dean knows this, has known it since he was old enough to carry Sam, the same way he knows that the sun sets every day. It’s a fundamental truth carved into his bones, but instead of doing what he should, he thinks about Bobby’s junkyard.

He thinks of being surrounded by the disassembled guts of car engines, of wind so cold the skin under his ratty, thrifted coat goosebumped. Of the day his dad pressed his favorite gun in his hands (the silver one with the spiral engravings) and said, _Now, show me how you’d shoot me, son._

“We can end this here and now,” John says. His whole body strains with the force it must be taking to keep Azazel in, but all Dean sees is Bobby trying to get John to stand down, Dean’s eyesight blurring with big, fat tears he didn’t let fall because Dad said men don’t cry, and all Dean ever wanted was to make him proud.

“ _Dean_ ,” John shouts. “Shoot me! Shoot me in the heart.”

His dad pressing a gun in his hand, telling him—

Second rule: wrap your fingers in a v around the backstrap, put your thumb on the hammer. _And aim for the heart, Dean,_ his dad said. _You hear me? Aim for the heart._

Third rule: Sometimes there’s no saving someone. Sometimes you have to shoot to kill the monster, no matter how painful.

Black smoke erupts from John’s open mouth, and Dean doesn’t shoot.

***

He hears his dad’s voice in the sub-zero wasteland of Hell, hears his voice like a broken record as he tears apart one soul after the other: _Aim for the heart_.

“It’s what made you my best student,” Alastair says through the flesh, blood, and salt clogging his throat. He spits it out and smiles at Dean, teeth stained red. “Oh, you know how to get to the tender parts of a man, don’t you. Know how to make them squeal.”

“I’ve gutted a lot of pigs,” he agrees. Then Dean stabs him right under the ribs.

Alastair caves into himself, breathing hard, and it makes some monstrous, dark part of Dean flare with satisfaction.

There’s a verse in Colossians about karma being a bitch. _There is no partiality,_ it says. Standing there as executioner, Dean feels absolute.

Alastair laughs. “Pigs,” he echoes, nodding his head, “and doves.” He pitches forward just slightly, dizzy with the pain, and gathers himself enough to leer at Dean—smiling, still smiling. “You were quite a sight.”

Dean leans in, too, like they’re a pair flirting across a table at a bar, but instead of only imagining it, he puts all his weight behind the blade and twists. This time, Alastair makes a pained, half-swallowed sound in the back of his throat.

“All this sweet talk is making you sound cheap,” he tells him.

“Don’t forget. I was the first person to treat you for what you are.” Dean turns his back on him and saunters toward the table. Alastair’s attention is a physical weight on his shoulders.

Intellectually, Dean knows Alastair is chained down in a devil’s trap, and he also knows his eggs are so scrambled that mental health services would pay big bucks to make him their poster child. Still. That doesn’t keep Dean from fidgeting like it’s more than just Alastair’s gaze touching him.

“You know I’m right,” Alastair says. “Without me, all you are is a stand-in mother and a half-decent lay.” He smiles again. “That last one is generous.” 

“Is this really the best you can do?” Dean asks, facing him now. “‘Cause I gotta tell you, your armchair psychoanalysis bullshit is getting old.”

Before Alastair can say anything else, Dean pries his mouth open and scrubs it out with holy water.

***

In the hospital room, after Cas has fucked off to wherever he goes and Sammy has vanished downstairs to get coffee from the cafeteria, Dean hobbles out of bed, flicks on the too-bright, flickering lights, and stares at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

His face is bruised, his dry skin gleams with sweat, and a long, scabbing cut runs down the swell of his mouth. _You were quite a sight._

He wishes he had his knife on him, that way he could apply the razor edge of it to the glass and slice away until he’s nothing but a jagged reflection on sunken, cracked glass. Unrecognizable even to himself.   
  


***

Dean doesn’t have his mom’s hair.

His is too dark. It’s not even noticeably blond unless he’s standing under direct sunlight. It doesn’t curl like Mary’s, either, and his eyes are all the wrong color: green, not blue.

But the topography of his face is eerily similar to hers: the shape of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones, the dip of his chin. It’s what made it easier to calm John down from some truly spectacular fights with Sam. Dean would put himself between them and say, “Dad,” the same way Mary used to say, _John,_ hoping to whatever God there was that it was enough for John to see the ghost of his dead wife superimposed over Dean’s face.

Other people noticed, too.

John’s hunter friends used to crowd around Dean when he was a kid, cupping his face in their hands and saying, _Now, let me get a good look at you,_ and _Holy hell, but you’re the spitting image of your mom._ As Dean got older, their fingers started splaying wider over his face, started to linger.

Dean used to think of it as getting injured during a hunt. Sometimes he breaks a bone or pulls a muscle when he gets thrown, but staying down isn’t an option, so there’s nothing left but to swallow the pain and endure it.

After, Dean would spend hours late at night hunched over the bathroom sink like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing imaginary fingerprints off his raw skin till morning.

***

“So you’re saying you’re just well-adjusted?” Cas asks.

“God, no,” Dean says. “I’m just well-fed.”

The smile on Dean’s face is the slickest, most insinuating one he has in his belt, but Cas stares at him like he can see right through Dean. Like he knows Dean hasn’t been well fed a day in his life. Always hungry for _something_. For food when his dad would leave Dean alone in a motel room with a toddler like Sammy, who was growing so fast and ravenous 24/7. For a home, a place he could call his. For sex, even if that meant picking up a stranger at some dive. At least then Dean was asking for someone to touch him and make him feel something other than painfully, neglectfully empty.

Dean wonders if Cas knows how many times today Dean has felt pulled into his orbit, the way he hasn’t really left Cas’s side all day. If he’s even noticed that Dean can’t keep his eyes off Cas’s hands.

***

Dean’s never been religious. Sure, his mom would whisper, _There are angels watching over you,_ into his hair every night, but she would also tell him not to swear, for all the fucking good that did.

Cas asks, “Did it not… rub off?”

Dean, who has been ignoring his computer screen in favor of watching the guy in the parking lot smoke a cigarette, understandably chokes on the forgotten piece of burger in his mouth. “Fuck,” he says. “What?”

Cas stares for a long time before casting a dark glance out the window and huffing, irritable. “The Bible,” he clarifies.

“Sure,” Dean says, tapping a rhythm against the rickety table. “What? You think I’m a Bible-thumping, virgin pacifist for kicks?”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t ask stupid questions,” he points out. “So are you gonna help me out or what?”

Cas opens his mouth, looking like he’d rather start an argument than research, then seems to think better of it and snaps it closed. He averts his eyes, tilting his face toward the window, jaw locked. The thin, white sunlight poking through the cloudy sky illuminates his face, casting shadows over his cheeks, under his eyes.

The image reminds Dean of that night in the barn, of wings unfurled until they filled every empty corner. It should’ve felt too much like being around his dad’s hunting friends in bars, of women running their fingernails up his spine, but it hadn’t.

“The monster you seek is a banshee,” Cas says.

***

“ _Jesus_ ,” Dean snaps, after nearly dropping his fishing rod into the water in surprise. He could’ve just conjured a new one, but it would’ve been a bitch of a situation after already tying the hook.

After a moment, he puts his attention back on Cas. “You can’t just blast in here like this is _Dreamscape_ , Cas.”

Cas, being Cas, just squints at him. Dean rolls his eyes. “Why are you here?”

Instead of answering, Cas studies the deck under them. The wood is sturdier and newer than it probably is in reality, and it’s too early in the year for the trees to be losing their leaves, but they land softly in the stream, cast in an orange glow by the setting sun.

“This is a beautiful place,” Cas says.

“It’s a park in Michigan.” Bobby took Sam and Dean here once. He’d pulled them out of bed early and drove them out to spend the entire day learning how to fish while eating food that didn’t come in a can. The memory is a little fuzzy in Dean’s mind, but he apparently remembers enough to be sitting in Bobby’s fishing chair. It’s old, worn-through, and more gray than blue after years of it collecting dust in the trunk of Bobby’s truck, but it’s comfortable.

Dean clears his throat and glances at Cas, who’s standing stiffly a few feet away.

He lets himself smirk. “Are you afraid I bite?”

Cas frowns. “Of course not. You’re not a beast.”

“Right,” Dean says flatly, then, “I meant sit.” He tips his head to one side, where a matching mesh chair appears out of thin air.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Dean bristles. He hates being coddled, and it’s even worse that Cas knows what Dean needs the coddling for. How could he not? Angel of the Lord and all that, but that doesn’t mean he has to baby Dean, and he sure as fuck doesn’t need to remind Dean of what Dean has done. He just—

The dream falters around him like a TV on the fritz. Dean grits his teeth and scrubs at his face with one hand.

“Dean,” Cas says. “I can leave.”

The word _yes_ balances on his tongue, but he swallows it down before it can make it past his lips. Cas might be awkward and tactless, but—Dean doesn’t want him to go.

The thought immediately stabilizes the dream, as if Dean can afford to be any more glaringly obvious. Overhead, they hear the sounds of birds chirping as they rustle their feathers.

“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” he says.

“Dean,” Cas starts, but Dean interrupts him, repeating, “You don’t make me uncomfortable.”

Cas’s expression changes, looking at him like—Dean doesn’t know. He turns away, focuses on the water lapping against the grass, and points at the chair. “Shut up and sit down.”

***

_You’re empty, Dean,_ Famine says. _You don’t want anything._

 _You got me all wrong, pal,_ he says. Dean is made up entirely of wants, all of them locked up behind bars. He should feel rabid with Famine’s sickly hands laid flat against his chest, but he taught his need how to gnaw on scraps years ago.

***

When Dean is sixteen years old, his dad leaves for two weeks.

The cash he gives Dean for groceries runs out after eight days.

Sam catches a bad cold on the third day. He needs cough medicine and vitamins, both things Dean can’t afford with the seven dollars left in his pocket. Sam can’t take those things on an empty stomach, either, even if he’s likely to puke all of it out within an hour of eating it.

So Dean does what he has to, and deliberately doesn’t think about it. He was planning on never thinking about it, actually, and that lasts until the next time John dumps him and Sam at Pastor Jim’s church, where Dean punches a guy trying to goad him into signing a chastity pledge.

“What has gotten into you, Dean?” Pastor Jim demands, after dragging Dean to his office and smacking a bag of frozen peas against Dean’s busted mouth.

It’s a loaded question if Dean’s ever heard one, and he feels like Pastor Jim just flicked off the safety and emptied four rounds of it into Dean.

He doesn’t storm out. He doesn’t scream—though he wants to, can feel one perched at the back of his throat. He doesn’t think of the pamphlet he has hidden at the bottom of his duffel because he missed too much of health class this year and doesn’t know what he’s meant to do. He doesn’t imagine the smell of a dirty bathroom stall clinging to his clothes like the broad hands of an adult.

He says, “You should really tell your volunteers to leave me alone.”

“Greg was doing his job,” Pastor Jim reminds him, but he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, and relents, “I’ll let them know not to crowd you anymore. Happy?” He doesn’t wait for Dean to answer before straightening. “Excellent.”

When Dean moves to get up, too, Pastor Jim stops him. “I don’t think so. How about you stay in here and cool off.”

“Give time for your asshole employee to cool off, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. Pastor Jim’s office consists of a window that doesn’t open, a bookshelf, and a pile of paperwork on his desk. “What the hell am I supposed to do in here?”

Pastor Jim pulls a brown softcover off his shelf at random and tosses it on Dean’s lap. The _Holy Bible_ stares back up at him.

“There,” he says, then rolls his eyes at whatever expression Dean has on his face. “Calm down. I’ll even let you keep whatever section you decide to steal this time.”

***

Later—much, much later—Cas finds it where it sits on Dean’s nightstand. He’s wearing Dean’s t-shirt, and under the warm glow of the lamp, Cas looks more human, all that muscle reduced to soft flesh. Between his hands, the paper is yellowing and smudged from years of Dean running his fingers over it. Just looking at it makes Dean’s chest ache.

He doesn’t bother pretending he’s still asleep. That trick never fools Cas, anyway. “I ripped it out of a Bible when I was a kid.” He used to carry it around in his wallet before they found the bunker. There’s a short pause. “But you already knew that.”

Another pause, this one vaguely guilty. “Yes,” Cas says. “How long have you kept it?”

Dean sits up and shrugs, carefully casual. “Don’t know. Since I was seven, maybe.”

Seven. The same age his dad took him out back and told Dean to shoot him. Somehow, the ache gets worse.

Cas turns off the lamp before he crawls back into bed, casting them both into darkness. He settles at Cas’ side and noses past the neckline of Dean’s shirt, hiding a kiss in the space where Dean’s shoulder meets his neck. “The page,” Cas murmurs. “It’s from Genesis.”

Dean swallows. “I know.”

“And there above it stood the Lord, who said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac,’” Cas says, dropping another kiss on the bridge of Dean’s nose, the crinkle of his eye, his temple. “‘Wherever you go, know that I am watching over you. Know that I will bring you back to this land I have given you.’”

Dean reaches for him—why, he doesn’t know. Just to touch. To cover Cas’s mouth because this all feels like too fucking much, all of it. Cas’s devotion and singular, focused adoration still overwhelm Dean when he lets it. He hasn’t even fully gotten used to how Cas touches _him_ , the fact that Dean _wants_ Cas to touch him. It leaves him concussed every time.

Or maybe Dean reaches out just for the sake of it. Reaching like Adam in the Sistine Chapel, recreating the space between his hand and God’s where Heaven and Earth touch.

Cas folds Dean’s hand in his own and applies his mouth to Dean’s scarred knuckles. “‘Know that until I have done what I have promised you, I will not let you be lost or forgotten.’”

**Author's Note:**

> u can follow me at [tumblr dot cleromancer dot edu](https://quensty.tumblr.com/) for some truly batshit bonkers insane spn content.
> 
> also go follow v @[givecaschapstick](https://givecaschapstick.tumblr.com/)! (threat)


End file.
